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Make your own gift ideas:


Planet wreath: Print photos/draw pictures of the planets and glue onto a wreath of pine cones, holly, grape vines twisted together, dried leaves, or other.

Rocket wreath: Print photos/draw pictures of the Delta II rocket, or Saturn V rocket, and/or your favorite rocket, name, label, and place them in a circle nose to tail, to make a holiday wreath, or standing in a circle to decorate a birthday cake. . . . or other ideas.

Sew a planet or spacecraft lapel for someone's jacket or shirt pocket. Make sure to learn the right stitch so the edges don't fray.

Draw &/or Paint your version of an interesting astronomical event on nice 8.5"x11" sheet or small canvas, in pencil, crayon, watercolor, pastels, or oils. Be sure to sign your work, and/or send a holiday greeting (from outer space!)

Make &/or decorate a paper weight, mug, night light, cookies, or other.

Make your own creative astronomical gift idea.




Spacecraft Resources:


FREE Models:


New Horizons 1/25 scale paper model: info, instructions, print

DAWN Spacecraft: instructions, print pp.6-11


NASA Discovery Program Spacecraft Models

http://jleslie48.com/gallery_models_real.html

http://www.axmpaperspacescalemodels.com/LOGO.html

Solar:

Pioneer 10 & 11

Voyager I         1977

Voyager II

SOHO     http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/, 

paper model: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/freestuff/papermod.pdf

STEREO  http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

            http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

            http://stereo.jhuapl.edu/education/activities/pdfs/STEREOModel.pdf

Solar Probe+      http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/02sep_spp/

SDO

ISS      http://www.csiro.au/resources/InternationalSpaceStation.html   paper model, good basic info also

Hubble

Satellites

LISA

 

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/SolarTsunami.shtml

Do Solar Tsunami's Exist?

The twin STEREO spacecraft confirmed their reality in February 2009 when sunspot 11012 unexpectedly erupted. The blast hurled a billion-ton cloud of gas (a coronal mass ejection, or CME) into space and sent a tsunami racing along the sun's surface. STEREO recorded the wave from two positions separated by 90 degrees, giving researchers an unprecedented view of the event.

"It was definitely a wave," says Spiros Patsourakos of George Mason University, lead author of a paper reporting the finding in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Not a wave of water, but a giant wave of hot plasma and magnetism."

The complete article appeared on the NASA portal (Nov. 19, 2009) here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/solar_tsunami.html

Below STEREO is providing additional movies and images not included with the article that support this finding.


solar_t.mov   mov

A "mug shot" of a solar coronal wave: A short video sequence showing observations from STEREO Behind ("SC B") and Ahead ("SC A") of the coronal wave event. STEREO Behind (left)sees the wave "full face," or head on, while STEREO A (right) gets a profile; the two spacecraft were just over 90° apart at the time. The grey parts of the image are formed by subtracting successive pairs of images from the SECCHI Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) taken in an emission line of eleven-times ionized iron at 195 Å, and characteristic of plasma at 1.5 million Kelvin. The green-white color table shows part of the field of view of the SECCHI COR1 visible-light coronagraph, which records light from the surface of the Sun scattered from free electrons in the highly ionized solar corona.

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/tsunami/euvi_cor.png

STEREO Ahead ("STA") and Behind ("STB") views of the coronal wave event. The Behind spacecraft views (bottom) show the wave expanding over much of the solar hemisphere visible from that spacecraft, while the Ahead spacecraft (top) shows the expanding coronal mass ejection (CME) bubble leaving the EUVI field of view (grey difference images) and entering the COR1 field of view (green images).

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/tsunami/context_021309.png

Images of the Sun from the STEREO Behind ("STB") and Ahead ("STA") spacecraft's SECCHI Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) instrument, obtained on February 13, 2009, in a spectral line formed at 1.5 million Kelvin. The spacecraft orbit the Sun just inside (Ahead) and outside (Behind) the earth's orbit; in February, they were 90° apart, so Behind was able to observe the boxed active region nearly at disk center, while Ahead saw it on the limb, or edge of the Sun.


Last Revised: Friday, 20-Nov-2009 15:47:34 EST
Responsible NASA Official: [e-mail address: 
gurman<at>gsfc<dot>nasa<dot>gov]

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/item.php?id=stereoimages&iid=127


A 3D Solar Wave
http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/img/stereoimages/preview/3D_EITwave.jpg

When a coronal mass ejection (CME) erupts from the Sun, movies in extreme ultraviolet light often show enormous waves, spreading over a large area on the solar surface, just as tsunamis travel far from the original seismic event. Now STEREO data have been used to show that these waves are the footprints of giant domes that spread upward into the corona as well as outward across the surface. Astrid Veronig and colleagues at the University of Graz in Austria say this dome is part of a coronal shock wave, separate from the CME itself, traveling at 280 km/s along the solar surface, but headed upwards at 650 km/s (almost 1.5 million miles per hour). This is the first time the full wave front has been seen moving through the corona as well as across the solar surface. These results have just been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters

The movie shows images from January 17, 2010 in the 195 A band of of STEREO-B's SECCHI/Extreme UltraViolet Imager (EUVI). To the left is a running difference movie in which the previous frame is subtracted from the current frame. This emphasizes faint changes. You can easily see the wave spreading across the solar disk and into the corona. To the right are the regular EUVI images.


More about STEREO observations of this kind of solar wave:
Do Solar Tsunami's Exist?

Solar Tsunami Blasts Across the Sun

Abstract of the scientific paper

3D_EITwave.mp4   mpeg




Astro Places to Buy
http://www.thinkgeek.com - Thanks Dave!


Astronomical Suppliers 2016
Telescopes & Accessories
Astromatic.net, Astronomical League Orion, Clement Focuser, JMI, Losmandy, OPT, ScopeStuff, Scopetronix, Software Bisque, Telescope.net, Thousand Oaks Optical
Photography
42nd Street Photo, Adorama, B&H Photography, KEH
Magazines - Books
Astronomy Magazine, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Sky & Telescope, Willmann-Bell Publishers